


Migration

by schweet_heart



Series: Merlin Fic [14]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Arthur Pendragon Returns, Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Resurrection, remix eligible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-04
Updated: 2015-12-04
Packaged: 2018-05-04 20:02:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5346791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweet_heart/pseuds/schweet_heart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Butterflies fly south for the winter. So Merlin follows them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Migration

Butterflies fly south for the winter. Merlin figures this out mostly by accident, some years after Arthur leaves him; he follows them right across the country because he has nothing better to do, and because something about the butterflies calls to him, somehow. They always have. He remembers that day in the crystal cave, when he’d felt his magic come back, filling him for the first time, and he had breathed a beautiful blue-winged butterfly into existence out of pure happiness. It’s not much. A scrap of recollection. Sometimes it barely seems like anything at all, in light of what came after. But it’s something, and he holds onto it tightly as he follows the fluttering strips of colour across the devastated landscape, ahead of the snow and the chill, but only just.

 

 

 

_“Merlin,” Arthur says, putting down his sword and standing like this is hardly a surprise. Like he’s been expecting them all this time, and Merlin’s been keeping him waiting. “I suppose I should have known it would be you.”_

_“What are you talking about?” Merlin asks. He has a feeling like maybe he’s in a dream, kind of, the world blurred slightly with mist and bright light. The butterflies have come to rest in Arthur’s hair, and the king glances up at them with annoyance._

_“Shoo,” he says, waving an arm. The butterflies take to the air again, and are gone. Arthur says, “You’re my guide. You’re supposed to lead me back out of this place.”_

_“But I don’t even know how I got here,” Merlin protests. “I just followed the butterflies.”_

_“Well, turn around, then, and follow them back out. I’ll be right behind you.”_

_Merlin wants to be happy about this, but he can’t be, because there’s still a large part of him which suspects this isn’t real._

_“You won’t leave?”_

_Arthur’s eyes are blue in the whiteness, brighter than the butterflies._

_“I’ll never leave you again.”_

 

 

 

It’s not an easy journey. Merlin, with all his clumsiness, is not a butterfly; he has neither their fleetness nor their gift of flight. He considers turning himself into one for the duration, but worries that he will be unable to turn himself back. Unable — or unwilling. That kind of blindness is its own temptation. He settles for following on foot, and when that fails, for turning himself into a bird of prey, his namesake. The clarity which this transformation affords is disconcerting, and he only does it when he can no longer avoid it. At night, he dreams of looking up through deep water, and wakes to find his bedroll soaked with dew, white with frost at the edges. He thinks of Arthur, remembers the gold of his hair and the gleam of his smile. The fire does little for the chill in his bones; sometimes it feels like the only warmth he has.

 

 

 

_“Where are we, anyway?”_

_Arthur pauses for a moment to glance at him. “I assumed it was Avalon.”_

_“It isn’t.” Merlin isn’t sure how he knows this, but he’s certain he is correct. “This is somewhere else.”_

_“I don’t know, then,” Arthur says, and resumes walking. The fog is thick around them, yet entirely insubstantial. Merlin can barely see the ground before him, and yet Arthur never seems to lose focus, as if the mist spills away from him, unable to touch him in the gleaming light. “You’re the sorcerer. Shouldn’t you know?”_

_Merlin huffs. “Just because I have magic doesn’t make me an expert on all things magical,” he says. “This isn’t a dream, is it?”_

_Arthur turns to him, an amused expression on his face. “Does it matter if it is?”_

_“Yes.”_

_“Why?”_

_“Because if I’m going to have to wake up without you, then…” He stops, taking a deep breath. “Then maybe I don’t want to dream about you anymore.”_

_“Oh.”_

_They keep walking, Merlin a half step behind Arthur even though he’s supposed to be the one guiding them, the butterflies a brief suggestion of movement in the fog. If this isn’t a dream, then Merlin wants to reach out and touch him, to apologise for everything he’s done — and everything he’s failed to do. But fear keeps him mute and his hands fastened to his sides. He doesn’t know where they are, but he does know this: the rules of magic are seldom kind, and chances are this will not end well._

 

 

Mornings are the hardest to cope with; when he wakes up, it’s like losing Arthur all over again. His hands ache with cold and his clothes are stiff with the frost that settles on them overnight, and there are times when Merlin feels every inch the old man he had once pretended to be. There is snow now, this high up, every-so-often patches of it clustered against the dead trunks of old oaks and filling hollows in the rock-face. The ground beneath him turns hard and bleak, the wind pinches as it blows past him, as if intentionally vicious. Merlin walks on, until the leather of his boots is worn through and his hands are rough and bleeding from the ascent, and still the butterflies remain just out of reach.

 

 

 

_“Where do you go when you’re not here?” Arthur asks him once. “I don’t like the way you disappear. Sometimes I turn around and you’ve vanished mid-sentence.”_

_“I can’t exactly help it,” Merlin says crossly. It’s been days, perhaps weeks, and they’re getting nowhere: everything around them is still smothered by that impenetrable mist, and it’s making him anxious. “I expect I must wake up. That’s what you do, from dreams, isn’t it?”_

_“Well, stop it,” Arthur says, then seems to reconsider when he realises what he’s said. “I mean — can’t you try and warn me, at least?”_

_“I don’t know when it’s going to happen,” Merlin explains. He stumbles and nearly falls over a large rock that has appeared in his path, as if from nowhere. Somewhere, muffled by the fog, he hears pebbles rattle and echo, as if tumbling down an invisible cliff. A thread of fear, the sharp-thin electricity of adrenaline, pulses through his veins and makes his arms feel suddenly weak. “There doesn’t seem to be any kind of pattern to it.”_

_Arthur looks at him, sidelong, and there’s uncharacteristic vulnerability in his voice when he says, “But you will come back, right?”_

 

 

 

Merlin wakes up and he’s still sobbing, and it’s awful, because he can hardly breathe through the congestion in his nose and his chest feels like he’s been bruised all over. He sits up, mouth open on a cloud of breath as he struggles for air, and below him he can see, abruptly, a chasm only a short way beneath him, yawning like a mouth waiting to swallow him up. There is a crispness to the image, as if newly drawn, and Merlin is struck with the strange sense of never having seen it before, despite having climbed his way upwards from it a mere day — ten hours — a lifetime ago.

 

The butterflies have changed colour. There is only a small cluster of them, no longer various shades of blue but darkened to purple, aubergine, violet. The colour of royalty.

 

“Arthur,” Merlin whispers, and pushes his battered body on.

 

 

 

_Merlin dreams in colour, but also texture. The mist is clammy and damp, thick like melted honey. Breathing in it feels as if someone has pressed a wet cloth over his face._

_Arthur seems untroubled by the sensation._

_“Hurry up, will you?” he demands, scrambling ahead of Merlin over the invisible landscape. He can hear muffled footfalls, see the glint of gold and red up ahead of him. He can’t seem to catch his breath to beg Arthur to slow down. “We don’t have much time.”_

_And he’s right; there is a sense of urgency tonight, a hand between his shoulder-blades, urging him onwards, the sense of a pressure head building and about to burst. There’s a ringing in Merlin’s ears that won’t stop._

_“I’m coming,” he calls over the sound. “I’m coming, Arthur— “_

 

 

 

Snow is falling softly when Merlin reaches the top of the mountain. He stands with his knees braced, hands on his thighs, breathing heavily, and all around him is pure white. He only knows he’s reached the summit because there is nowhere else to go, and so he stops, shivering, and waits.

 

 

 

He waits for a long time.

 

 

 

The end, when it comes, arrives with the same abruptness and absurdity as a dream. The sky clears. The snow passes. Eventually, the wind dies away, stops shouting itself hoarse across the mountaintops and clawing at the rock-face and lies dormant below the peak, docile as a well-trained dog called to heel.

 

All is perfectly still. Merlin stands, unfolding his brittle bones and listening to them crack beneath his skin like dry kindling in an open fire. Below he can see for miles, a wide sweep of Arthur’s kingdom stretching away beneath him, lit golden and brilliant by a rising sun. Light gilds the peaks with a sharpness that hurts the eye. Merlin can see the last of the butterflies swirling upward into the air above him, their wings turned a deep, wine-red, blood on the snow. Slowly his bowed shoulders straighten.

 

“ _Ic þu forþācīge_ , Arthur,” he whispers, holding out a hand. It is time.


End file.
